Risk management in a Dynamic Society: A Modeling Problem

TLDR

Despite efforts to design safer systems, large‑scale accidents persist because the socio‑technical risk‑management system—spanning legislators, managers, planners, and operators—is under stress from rapid technological change, competition, and shifting regulations, yet each level has traditionally been studied in isolation. The study asks whether current accident‑causation models are adequate and argues that risk management should be modeled as a cross‑disciplinary control problem using a system‑oriented, functional‑abstraction approach that replaces task‑analysis with behavior‑shaping mechanisms. The authors adopt a cross‑disciplinary, system‑oriented control‑problem framework, employing functional abstraction and reviewing the convergence of human‑science paradigms within decision theory and management research relative to safety research. The study finds that convergence of human‑science research paradigms guided by cognitive science concepts supports this system‑oriented approach.

Abstract

In spite of all efforts to design safer systems, we still witness severe, large-scale accidents. A basic question is: Do we actually have adequate models of accident causation in the present dynamic society? The socio-technical system involved in risk management includes several levels ranging from legislators, over managers and work planners, to system operators. This system is presently stressed by a fast pace of technological change, by an increasingly aggressive, competitive environment, and by changing regulatory practices and public pressure. Traditionally, each level of this is studied separately by a particular academic discipline, and modelling is done by generalising across systems and their particular hazard sources. It is argued that risk management must be modelled by cross-disciplinary studies, considering risk management to be a control problem and serving to represent the control structure involving all levels of society for each particular hazard category. Furthermore, it is argued that this requires a system-oriented approach based on functional abstraction rather than structural decomposition. Therefore, task analysis focused on action sequences and occasional deviation in terms of human errors should be replaced by a model of behaviour shaping mechanisms in terms of work system constraints, boundaries of acceptable performance, and subjective criteria guiding adaptation to change. It is found that at present a convergence of research paradigms of human sciences guided by cognitive science concepts supports this approach. A review of this convergence within decision theory and management research is presented in comparison with the evolution of paradigms within safety research.